Honors Convocation
Remarks by the Provost
May 7, 2004
Good afternoon, honorees, guests, faculty and staff.
Assembled here in our historic Holloway Hall is a group of
Salisbury University’s most outstanding scholars, athletes, and
community citizens. To be acknowledged today are:
 50 Student Life Leadership Award Recipients
 92 Scholastic Award Recipients
 253 National Scholastic and Leadership Honor Society
Initiates
 1160 Dean’s List Students
I am honored to be addressing you.
I stand here, an older, graying administrator, and wonder what I
can say to you that will hold any long-term meaning. I am
challenged.
I thought about that 1983 text by Robert Fulgrum, All I Really
Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. (It dawns on me that
when that book was first published, some of you were not yet born
and most of you had not entered kindergarten.)
While that book has much to offer in terms of common sense
observations, I would argue that the title is incorrect. Everything
you need to know is going to take a lifetime to learn.
Clearly, you honorees at Salisbury University have established a good
foundation for success. You have already shown your talents and proven your
abilities. Your achievements are noteworthy. All these will keep you in good
stead in the future.
1
However, we should remember the legendary story of the Harvard
president who addressed a graduating class of medical students by
saying:
Gentlemen, we have just discovered that half of everything
we’ve taught you over the last four years is wrong.
Unfortunately, we don’t know which half.
You might keep that in mind when you imagine where you will be
in 10, 20 or 30 years – say, in the year 2034. What do you think
you will need to carry forth from your Salisbury University
education?
Thirty years isn’t all that long, most of you will be in your 50’s
then, yet the world changes rapidly. Are you getting from your
time at SU what you need for the next 30 years? The college
experience is much more than adding new knowledge and skills;
an important aspect is a new view of yourself and the world you
live in. Hopefully it is a much larger, richer, more diverse and
more complex world than the one you left in high school.
Before he entered politics, Woodrow Wilson was President of
Princeton University and did much to reshape and modernize their
curriculum. In one of his speeches during that process he is quoted
as saying: “It is the duty of the University to make the student as
unlike the parent as humanly possible.”
 I believe what he wanted to do was to replace habit with
inquiry, superstition with reason, and maybe comfort with a
vision for something greater than the individual.
 It was also reported that, when the mother of a potential
student challenged him, saying “ and does Princeton
guarantee it’s educational program?” he replied, “ certainly,
Madame, if you are not completely satisfied with our
program, we will gladly return your son.”
2
I think I can guarantee that we have given you a solid foundation
on which to build, but I’m also sure we haven’t taught you all you
need to know - because none of us know what that might be in 20
or 30 years.
Thinking again of those Harvard med students, even what we think
we know changes with new discoveries. A simple example is the
discovery of new facts -- old facts don’t go away, new ones are
added - but how we understand them does change with time. In
my own case as a chemist, the periodic table of elements has not
been discarded. It has, however, been expanded quite a bit since
my freshman Intro Chemistry course.
Consider another example - the case of scientific laws and theories.
I hope our courses have taught you that at the heart of science is
the idea that our explanations, our laws and theories, are
falsifiable, that is, as new verifiable data is accumulated even the
most venerable “law” or “theory” may need to be changed. That
is, found to be wrong.
 I find it amazing that we still hear objections to the Theory
of Evolution first proposed by Charles Darwin over 150
years ago because it is only a “theory,” while, on the other
hand, great deference is paid to Isaac Newton’s “Law of
Gravity” of seventeenth century fame.
 Well guess what? It has been known since Albert Einstein’s
General Theory of Relativity of 1913 that Newton was
wrong. Not very wrong, especially here on earth. When
dealing with human sized objects and ordinary speeds, his
equations are just fine and still used daily.
 But Newton’s laws are just a special case of the more
general explanation provided by the curvature of space-time
that Einstein proposed. Try to send a space probe to Mars
without the relativistic corrections to Newton and it will miss
the target.
3
That periodic chart of my freshman year listed some heavy
elements with properties that were very hard to explain using the
atomic theory of the time. Turns out we also needed Einstein and
Relativity to explain how the electrons in those very large atoms
were behaving. My point? You can’t memorize the future. At
best, you can learn how to learn.
Still, I believe, the skills, good habits, questioning attitudes, and
confident outlook that you develop now will be of immense service
to you, even in 2034. That is why the faculty and staff at SU have
tried so hard to impart to you these immutable characteristics of
success.
As you complete your Salisbury University education, this May or
in a year or so, you join a worldwide fellowship of educated minds
that spans both distance and time.
 You have the tools and the habits of examining issues from a
variety of viewpoints and are able to imagine alternative
solutions that will be needed to accomplish your goals and to
create meaningful lives. I am pleased that Salisbury
University will have been an important part of your ultimate
success.
Now, I request that you keep a particular challenge in mind.
Because you have achieved much and, no doubt, will continue to
achieve much more, it is important that you give back — give back
for the public good.
 As you complete undergraduate and perhaps graduate school
and, when you land your first employment, you may desire to
buy that new car, add to your high tech inventory, enhance
your wardrobe, your residence, and enjoy other personal
gains. And you can do these things.
4
 But, please, do not lose sight of sharing your talents with
your local community. The rewards are enormous — both for
you and your community. Whether you assist with an after
school program, join a service club, take part in local or
higher government, or raise resources for fighting disease,
your energies and abilities will contribute to the public good
and to your own personal satisfaction.
 This will be so next year and for the years to come.
And finally, whatever else you do, every chance you get, vote.
There is no better way to give to your local and national
community than to participate in its electoral process.
Congratulations to each of you in identifying and reaching your
objectives at SU. May you continue to do so in the years to come.
5